Weekend report

H

ad a relatively nice weekend. Indeed, the past few weekends have been pretty nice since I've decided to leave work at work. For most of my teaching career, I took work home: grading, reading, preparing for class. But my work load was such that I could balance work with home/play. But the work load for the last academic year was way over the top. I found myself working 24/7.

And ignoring my family.

Well, no more of that shit. Starting in September, I will go to work earlier, spend a 35-40 hour work week at school, and then leave everything there. If I don't finish grading, then it doesn't get graded. If I don't have a lesson plan ready in time, then the students will have to live through a discussion session. I love to teach and spending personal time to teach is not a sacrifice, but I cannot expect nor will I allow M to make that sacrifice. I'm pretty sure that's not the reason why she married me. And I certainly didn't marry her to ignore her because of work. Otherwise I shouldn't have gotten re-married. So I will do my work at school, I will keep my office door closed more than before and shoot the breeze with students less.

This is a sea change in my approach to teaching. I've always seen teaching as a calling more than a career, and so I take my teacher-student relationship very seriously. But I hope they will understand when I cut back their time a bit for myself. And since this change is rather drastic, I am implementing it slightly this summer. I don't spend 40 hours on campus, but I arrive earlier than previous summers, and I try not to take too much work home.

The result is calmer weekends. Friday I went shopping with M, Saturday we went to Home Depot to get stuff to do yard work--mulch is too stinky--and yesterday we went to see "Howl's Moving Castle". It was in Japanese, so that was good. I didn't want to see it dubbed. That would suck.

The movie was visually stunning, as all of Miyazaki's animations are, but the story was a little confusing as many reviewers have written over the past few weeks. But when I sat down to think about it, it became a bit clearer. But I'll talk about it tomorrow. It's back to work for me!